Extremes and disaster risk management

The challenge

Extreme events such as bushfires, floods and storms are a feature of Australia’s variable climate. They have far-reaching costs, ranging from financial costs to governments, businesses and households, to environmental impacts, to physical and psychological impacts on individuals.

In a changing climate extreme events are likely to become more severe and/or frequent, with a corresponding increase in economic, environmental and social costs.

How the ESCC Hub is meeting the challenge

Improving our understanding of how extreme events will change in the future will provide disaster risk managers with better quality, relevant and targeted information that will enhance our resilience to extreme weather and climate events.

We’ve updated Australia’s national climate model, the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS), so it can participate in CMIP6 and therefore be used by national and international climate researchers.

We’ve analysed past climate variability and extremes to enhance our understanding of the underpinning climate drivers, and shed light on the extent to which these extreme events are influenced by human activities.

We’ve made significant steps towards developing a decadal forecasting system and capability to fill the critical gap between seasonal climate predictions and multi-decadal climate projections. We’ve also improved understanding of marine heat wave trends, causes, the influence of human activities and the predictability of ocean temperature extremes over multi-year to decadal timescales.

Extremes and disaster risk management was last modified: May 23rd, 2019 by realemedia34